University of Tübingen study reveals crows make visual decisions twice as fast as primates

Researchers at the University of Tübingen have discovered that crows can process visual information and make decisions approximately twice as fast as primates. In a study published in the journal Science, neurobiologists Andreas Nieder and Philipp Schmidbauer demonstrated that crows could identify the direction of moving patterns in about 235 milliseconds with high accuracy.

Using a random dot motion task, the researchers monitored neural activity in the nidopallium caudolaterale, a region of the avian brain comparable to the human prefrontal cortex. The study found that neural signals for different directions began to diverge just 70 milliseconds after a visual stimulus appeared, well before the birds physically reacted.

Despite lacking a layered cerebral cortex like humans, the crows' brains appear to utilize similar fundamental principles for decision-making. The findings suggest that evolution can produce different brain structures that perform comparable, highly efficient cognitive functions.